An Algerian web developer who claims to have “a demonstrated history of working in the internet industry” has launched coronavirus-themed email scams and helped build other hacking tools, according to a police intelligence report.
Samir Djelal, who allegedly used the internet alias Cazanova Haxor, developed malicious software that was used in a phishing attack aimed at California city accounts in March 2020, states an internal report from the California Cyber Security Integration Center, a state organization meant to facilitate information sharing about digital threats.
The threat profile, dated April 6, 2020, was made public as part of BlueLeaks, the 269 GB database containing data on police bulletins, training materials and other law resources taken from law enforcement fusion centers. Distributed Denial of Secrets, a WikiLeaks-style transparency group, appears to have obtained the trove of information after hackers breached Netsential, a Texas internet company that handles websites for police agencies throughout the United States. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the disclosure.
In this case, police say, an Algerian named Samir Djelal aimed to steal data from victims early during the COVID-19 pandemic by using an email address that appeared to belong to an unnamed California city government employee, with the subject line “Awareness_Reg WHO,” meant to resemble information from the World Health Organization. The message actually directed users to a link that researchers tied to the “Morphine” phishing kit, which collects victims’ usernames, passwords and other data by masquerading as a legitimate Microsoft Office 365 page.
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